Photopia

Well, first off, Photopia did not manage to make me cry; however, it did leave me depressed, which is an accomplishment in itself. I found myself easily frustrated by the site. I didn’t want to cheat, so I labored on. The most difficult pages for me to get through were the Wendy/dream themed ones. I don’t think I ever want to type “Go north/south/east/west” ever again. I was also frustrated by the scifi theme that so starkly contrasted with the more normal narrative pages, but I came to appreciate them once I learned where they came from.

As for the story, it did make me sad. I had a feeling something bad would happen to Alley when she was young. Darwin didn’t seem to be working overtime for a little girl who jumps in a pool to check out if it looks different from underwater. The car accident was sad and senseless. The little pieces of Alley’s waking life were all happy. It’s easy to imagine her date the following Saturday if she had not gotten into the wreck, or everything turning out differently if she had gone to the dance as opposed to babysitting. The one piece of the story that bothered me was the photopia itself. Alley’s parents note that she seems enamored by it as a baby, but it led to her having strange and unpleasant dreams all of the time, along with the creepy one of her talking to the older and cursed version of herself. Would Alley’s dreams have been left uncorrupted if she didn’t have the photopia? Or was it inevitable? It struck me that the thing her parents bought to comfort and inspire her ended up contributing to the tale of her demise.

Although I was frustrated by navigating the site, I did appreciate the little witty comebacks they had at the ready. At one point I had typed “kill”- Who?, the site politely asked, “me”, whereby the computer discouraged me from such senseless violence. Or if I tried to pick up the broken shovel, “The shovel is not useful anymore.” Well, thanks, I hadn’t realized that. That’s one aspect of interactive storytelling that really differs from regular old books… here, you have to work for it. I’ll admit, I did get frustrated, but the payoff when I would finally type the right thing (for once) and be rewarded with a paragraph was almost euphoric. It made me more aware of the story and more eager for details to emerge.

Blog #3: Photopia

Eventually, I came to a dead end in Photopia after spending about 45 minutes to an hour playing around with it. However, after becoming accustomed to what commands the program could process, it became a relatively easy process overall to navigate through Photopia. I enjoyed the fact that I played a relatively passive role in my outcome—I was more focused on exploring each scenario as much as possible, making the program less plot-based and more interactive in the sense that I had the illusion of choice-making. As the person interacting with the text, I was able to “explore the field of the possible” (211) as Marie-Laure Ryan discusses. By typing commands such as “listen,” “go north,” “examine ____,” et al, I felt included in the reading of a story, and I was allowed to make choices in terms of the order in which I learned elements of the story.

I feel that Ryan would place Photopia in the category of “electronic, interactive, nonergodic texts” (209), because of the inevitable outcomes of the various scenarios presented, though the allowance exists for the reader to make certain choices in the ways in which these scenarios unfold.

I am curious about the intentions of the author, however, due to the abrupt changes in plot lines. A screen will appear with a block of color that is somehow related to the story to come. For example, an all-black screen with a yellow bar that reads “gold” proceeds to lead into a story where the landscape is a shore with golden sand. Perhaps it is as simple as the author wanting to create a distinct barrier between each differing story line.

I understand that Krisztian felt that there was something left to be desired in Photopia, although I am a novice to almost all interactive text and enjoyed many of the elementary aspects of the program. However, I was deeply unimpressed by the lack of graphics and visual stimuli. In MBCBFTW, though I was disinterested in the story itself, I felt that it was greatly enhanced by the multimedia incorporated into the text.

Photopia does not seem to lend itself to a deep level of interpretation, especially since it seems intended for a younger audience. I felt that this was indicated by the fact that several words were defined for the reader of the text. Additionally, there’s very little that’s aesthetically stimulating about Photopia, as I mentioned earlier. It is an extremely simple, straight-forward presentation of text, with the only added creativity being the incorporation of different color schemes. It was almost like reading a book online (though one is able to interact with it personally) due to the large amount of narrative that will frequently pop up after a user command. The program also seems to act as a rudimentary video game, with the user collecting an inventory of items, such as a seed pod and a shovel.

Eventually, the game does exhaust its ability to be entertaining. It seems to become repetitive, even as different story plots emerge after “missions” are completed. Each story is a version of another story in which one must gather information, collect additions to one’s inventory, and complete some sort of mission. By the time I had come to a deadlock in the game, I felt like I understood the game well enough to understand its purpose as a source of interactive entertainment, rather than cyber art (i.e. MBCBFTW) or more complex hypertext, such as Hegirascope.

Interactive Illusion

I used to like interactive fiction in the beginning of the 90’s, when a lack of good graphics allowed me to explore games that were founded purely on texts, and when I was naïve enough to think that in these games I was deciding the fate of the protagonist – when you are not even brushing your first decade in life that can happen.

Reading Photopia brought back interesting memories from my youth, like when I read underground interactive fiction about people and institutions that I knew – I’m quiet sure that there is a few out there about GMU too – or when I almost threw out my PC because I was frustrated with a riddle. Sadly, it also brought back memories as to why I don’t read them anymore.

Interactive fiction is fun as long as you can delude yourself into believing that you are deciding the outcome of the story. Photopia is especially fun in that regard, because of its engaging story and its elusive theme about free will – a theme that was perhaps raised by Adam Cadre in order to convey a message about the limits of interactive fiction. However, at the end of the day the fact that Photopia has a predetermined ending, regardless of what I do, and has no gaming aspect whatsoever will not bring me back intro the brethren of interactive fiction.

When I say that the ending is predetermined regardless of what I do, I literally mean that it’s predetermined. If you don’t believe me, then try to develop your character based on your decisions. You are going to fail in the first page. I know, because I had tried to “pull” Rob away from the wheel, “punch” him, and finally “kill” him before he kills somebody, but I failed. I always arrived at the same red light and red planet, and had to salvage the same seed the same way – I initially thought that the red planet will provide me with some gaming experience, and help me forget about “determinism,” but I as I later found out I was wrong.

While Photopia may have reinforced my belief as to why I don’t read interactive fiction, it also helped me to see how interactive fiction evolved from text to graphic based games. It helped me to appreciate games like Shenmue I-II, KOTOR I-II, Jade Empire, and Mass Effect even more. I may not be an interactive fiction fan anymore, but Adam Cadre’s Varicella – you can find this game on his website along with other interesting ones (http://adamcadre.ac/if.html) – did consume a few of my hours with its puzzles. I couldn’t help myself. Damn you Adam Cadre!